You know that time of the year when you start to think it’ll never be warm again? It’s, like, that mid-May weirdness when you’re sick of winter and longing for summer heat, but it feels like it’ll never, ever come, y’know?
Provided
And then summer pops up like a real emmer-effer, all hot and shit and your leg sticks to the vinyl car seat and that green chile stew you were in love with just a couple weeks ago suddenly sounds like the dish they’ll serve you for eternity when you for sure get to hell—only hell will probably feel less hot? We’re in that part of the year now. The hot part. It’s hot, and it feels hot all the way until the sun goes down, but that still leaves a lot of hot hours during the day. Our method for combating the madness? A high-powered fan pointed directly at our face, for sure, but also cold treats.
Some recent faves include:
- The So Delicious dairy-free coconut milk vanilla bean ice cream sandwiches (we’ve mentioned we love this company’s version of Cool Whip, and they take that same coconut plan to the next level with small—which means lower-cal—ice cream sammies that really knock out the sweet tooth without it being a whole thing).
- The Trader Joe’s tangerine cream bars (they’re so refreshing, but they are absolutely packed with ice cream and therefore not low-cal at all; plus, they only pop up seasonally and everyone else knows they exist, so good luck finding some).
- The Talenti mini sorbetto bars (they have a ton of flavors, and they’re so small that they only clock in at 50 cals per bar and we rec the lemon…do we just love citrus flavors?).
But we also have a clear winner in the frozen treat milieu, and it comes to us from a little company called Goodpop, which is, like, a…like, the word “good” is in the name, so you know it’s probably good. What item are we describing, we wrote in that annoying internet way designed to keep you scrolling? We’re talking about the orange ’n’ cream bar, a dairy- and gluten-free popsicle that finds coconut cream swaddled in orange popsicle stuff. There are, amazingly, few ingredients in these bad boys (which is something that shouldn’t be rare in popsicle world, yet is), and you can rest easy knowing the company’s website touts fair trade ingredients, that aforementioned gluten-free thing and, not least of all, that the pops are “creamy and delicious.”
We vouch for that last part, and each one feels like unfettered joy, even as it feels like the flames of Mount Doom flicker outside our hovel. You start with the popsicle part, an icy and kinda crunchy layer that practically begs to be savored. Oh, sure, you could bite right into that thing, but are you a maniac? Do you not, like us, fear touching your front teeth to frozen things?! We recommend sucking on that thing for a while. It’ll not only up your access to the orange flavor, it’ll slow down the process and that, mathematically, means more enjoyment. At some point, though, you unearth the creamy coconut, uh, cream, which has that soft, smooth coconut flavor that turns any orange flavor into a goddamned tropical affair.
At 90 calories each, you can totally eat two of them real quick and no one will know. Look for these little babies at Natural Grocers and probably Whole Foods. And if you’d like to know a little more about popsicles, you might look into our totally real and in no way jokey missive on popsicles themselves from 2022 (here’s a link). As we recall, that thing blew everyone’s minds, as we recall—by which we mean a bunch of people wrote to us angrily. Anyway, it’s hot, eat something cold. Or don’t. We’re not your mom.
Oh, wow, the 1960s were effed, man.
Also
- Welp, it’s confirmed. Mayhaps you recall a rumor in Le Fork about how Dinner For Two owner Andy Barnes (also a badass chef, btw) would take over the ol’ La Casa Sena restaurant on Palace Avenue? Albuquerque Business First confirmed that the other day, and we’re pretty pumped. Dinner For Two slaps, y’all, so we assume Barnes will take his same badassery over to Sena Plaza (which is what that Plaza is called). As for why we’re all double-down with parentheticals this week? That’s anyone’s guess (we think it’s the autism).
- Seems Los Alamos restaurant Beef & Leaf Café (which is an objectively very funny name, sorry) is all about Bastille Day (July 14) with a special week-long prix-fixe menu that includes foie gras riblettes, coq au vin and other French delights. What’s Bastille Day all about, you ask? Why, it’s all about how the norms and plebs stormed the French prison known as the Bastille in 1789, signaling the end of monarchy as they knew it. Say what you want about the French, but they sure know how to protest and they sure know how to cook food. Think of it like their Fourth of July, only we can’t speak to whether their neighbors will still be shooting off fucking fireworks nearly two weeks after the actual day.
- Um, excuse us, but there’s an Española pizza truck called Vigilante Pizza? Sold! We don’t eat much pizza these days on account of we’re old and it makes us feel terrible, but the next time we can no longer avoid the siren call, we might make that drive. Has anyone been there? Is it good?
- Regular Fork readers might know that we’ve always been kind of interested in the idea of foraging, but we just know we’ll be that forager who somehow eats the most poisonous mushroom in the whole world. Luckily, there are folks who put together classes in nature’s bounty—like the Zia Elemental School of Permaculture and Herbalism. Stop trying to say that five times fast and listen up: The ZESPH has an event coming up this Saturday during which they’ll take folks on a wild foods and medicinal plant walk along the Borrego Trail. The name of this event? Wild Foods and Medicinal Plant Walk (it’s a good name). This walk will show you what’s what when it comes to plants and stuff—but you should always remember to be beyond careful when you’re doing stuff like that. If you just want to know more about the idea of foraging, Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Tamed Food author Gina Rae La Cerva wrote a very cool primer for SFR’s 2024 Summer Guide, and you can read that by clicking right here. If you wanna take that class with ZESPH, click here, though.
The 1990s were also weird. Everything was all like, “TO THE XXXXXXX-TREME!!!!!!!!”
More Tidbits
- OK, so this is about Chicago, but we think it’s applicable here (we’ll get to how in a sec) to share a recent piece from Eater-dot-com wherein bakeries in Chicago are no longer playing it cool when it comes to people making up bullshit in online reviews. Good for them! We believe every restaurant is open to criticism, but we also think that when people lie about it for any reason, it cheapens the whole deal. To wit, we recently saw something online about how local restaurant Alkemē was dealing with an online reviewer who seemed to just make a bunch of stuff up so they could slam the restaurant online. Don’t do that.
- Didja hear the one about how A. Smith Bowman Cask Strength #4 was named the Best Bourbon and Best Whiskey at the 2025 International Whisky Competition (yes, without the “e”)? Well, it did, so you should know that if you like that kinda stuff.
- Meanwhile, The 50 Top Pizza guide to the best pizzerias in the friggin’ world announced its new list, and even though New Mexico isn’t anywhere on there (hahahaha—like it would be), we think it might be a handy guide for people who have the kind of money to travel and eat pizza. Believe us, we’d love to kick off some kind of pizza world tour, but we’re currently deciding between new shoes and the dentist, so…yeah. We aren’t sure how we got to this rant about class disparity when we actually think of pizza as the great equalizer, so we’ll digress. Here’s that list.
A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence
This week in SFR, our critic hits The Pink Adobe after a million years not hitting it, and though he definitely liked a lot about it, he wonders aloud whether the new-ish owners are playing it a bit too safe.
Also? A little explainer about the email situation we’ve been facing over the last year. We understand that readers miss the good old days, when you could just reach out and we could respond to you easily and quickly (and did do that), but something is bizarre in the state of Gmailandia, so here’s the best advice we can give you if you’d like to write us, and we hope you do: No more click, a little more copy/paste. If you want to drop us a line, please either copy and paste [email protected] into your email, or literally type out those words. We still can’t respond to you, but we can address your concerns in our next edition. We’re not a tech expert so much as we’re some kind of being that loves popsicles. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Cold as ice,
The Fork
